Page 256 - Important Chinese Art Hong Kong Sotheby's April 2017

3675 The current box and cover in situ in the
country home of Emil Hultmark (1872-1943)
PROPERTY FROM THE COLLECTION OF EMIL HULTMARK
(1872-1943) 此蓋盒原貯於 Emil Hultmark （1872-1943
年）郊外別墅（上圖左方）
A BLUE AND WHITE ‘BOYS’ BOX AND COVER
MARK AND PERIOD OF WANLI

of circular form, brightly painted in vivid shades of cobalt blue,
the stepped domed cover with a central medallion enclosing
sixteen boys at play in a fenced garden, with a boy dressed
as a dignitary seated on a chair at the centre leading other
boys around to read, beside a boy flying a kite and another
group of boys gathered around a table, in the foreground a boy
holding a flag behind another boy wearing an official hat riding
on a hobby horse, next to another group of boys at play with
garden foliage, the sides of the cover and the box decorated
with striding dragons in pursuit of ‘flaming pearls’, the rims
encircled by the babao alternating with stylised lingzhi sprays,
skirted around the foot with a band of foliate scrolls, the base
with a six-character reign mark within a double circle
22 cm, 8⅝ in

LITERATURE
Svenska hem i ord och bilder, Stockholm, 1936.

HK$ 500,000-700,000
US$ 64,500-90,500

明萬曆 青花十六子嬰戲圖圓蓋盒
《大明萬曆年製》款

出版：
《Svenska hem i ord och bilder》，斯德哥爾摩，1936年

Boxes painted with this dynamic design are held in important Further examples were sold at auction, such as a box from the
museums and private collections worldwide: a box from the T.Y. Chao, T.T. Tsui and Meiyintang Collections, sold in these
Qing court collection and still in Beijing, is illustrated in The rooms in 1987, at Christie’s New York in 1997, and again in
Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum. Blue these rooms, 7th April 2011, lot 67; two sold in our New York
and White Porcelain with Underglaze Red (II), Shanghai, 2000, rooms, the first, 6th November 1981, lot 270, and again, 17th
pl. 181; one from the collection of the Zwinger in Dresden, March 2009, lot 99, and the second, 20th March 2007, lot
is published in Porzellansammlung im Zwinger, Staaliche 760; and another box, from the collection of Hans Oström, sold
Kunstsammlungen, Dresden, 1982, p. 12; another in the in our London rooms, 13th June 1989, lot 216.
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, is illustrated in Daisy Lion-
Goldschmidt, Ming Porcelain, London, 1978, pl. 212; a fourth Emil Hultmark (1872-1943) was a renowned Swedish collector
box, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, is published and member of the small and exclusive group Kina Klubben
in Oriental Ceramics. The World’s Great Collections, Tokyo, (‘China Club’), which was formed in Stockholm in the late
1982, vol. 2, pl. 93; and a further example, in the Philadelphia 1920s. It comprised a number of serious collectors of Chinese
Museum of Art, Philadelphia, was included in the Museum’s porcelain, including the Crown Prince Gustav Adolf, later King
exhibition Ming Blue-and-White. An Exhibition of Blue- Gustav VI Adolf of Sweden, and Carl Kempe.
Decorated Porcelain of the Ming Dynasty, Philadelphia, 1949,
and is illustrated in Philadelphia Museum Bulletin, vol. XLIV, no.
223, Autumn 1949, pl. 141.

Mark
254 SOTHEBY’S 蘇富比